This was Venus’ first victory over her younger sibling in a Grand Slam final since the 2001 U.S. Open, and it evened their career record at 8-8.
“I can’t believe that it’s five,” Venus said. “But when you’re in the final against Serena Williams, five seems too far away. … She played so awesome, it was really a task to beat her.”
Venus came from 3-1 down in the first set to turn around the match, breaking Serena four times while dropping serve twice in a final that produced breathtaking tennis despite swirling wind.
This was more than a matchup between siblings; it was a contest between two of the hardest-hitting, most athletic players in the world at the top of their game.
Venus broke to finish the match, with Serena hitting a backhand wide on the second match point. The sisters embraced at the net, and Venus kept her celebrations in check as she twirled and waved to the Centre Court crowd.
Venus accepted the winner’s trophy — a sterling silver salver aptly named the Venus Rosewater dish — from the Duke of Kent.
“It’s so rewarding to perform here,” Venus said. “Every time I come back I know I have the chance to play well and make history. My first job is big sister and I take that very seriously.”
Watching from the players’ box was the sisters’ mother, Oracene. Their father, Richard, had flown back to the United States because he can’t stand to watch his daughters play each other.
Referring to the mixed feelings of her family about who to support, Venus said, “It’s hard for all of them, but I like to think they want me to win.”
The 26-year-old Serena accepted her runner-up trophy and paid tribute to her 28-year-old sister.
“I’m so happy that at least one of us was able to win,” Serena said. “She’s played great this year. We’re just glad to be in the finals again.”
The sisters were set to return later to Centre Court to play for the women’s doubles title, joining forces to face Lisa Raymond of the U.S. and Samantha Stosur of Australia in the final.
“Serena deserves to win something, so I’ll try even harder for that,” said Venus, who collected a winner’s check of $1.49 million.
Venus, appearing in her seventh Wimbledon final, avenged her two losses to Serena in the 2002 and 2003 title matches and stopped her sister from winning her ninth Grand Slam.
Many all-Williams finals have been awkward affairs that didn’t live up to expectations, with the sisters having trouble playing their best. But this final featured long, corner-to-corner rallies, booming serves and winning shots flashing all over the court.
Both sisters struggled in the wind, with Venus repeatedly stopping to catch her service toss and rallies often disrupted by sudden gusts.
“It was so not easy,” Serena said. “Every time I tried to hit a shot, the wind would blow it.”
On Sunday, five-time champion Roger Federer and two-time runner-up Rafael Nadal will meet in their third consecutive final at Wimbledon.
Federer, chasing his 13th Grand Slam title, has won 65 consecutive matches on grass and 40 straight at the All England Club. He will be trying to surpass Bjorn Borg by winning a sixth straight Wimbledon title. The only man to win six in a row was Willie Renshaw in the 1880s, and he had to win only one match to defend his titles.
Nadal could become the first man since Bjorn Borg in 1980 to win the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year.
Kent Couch was wearing a parachute Saturday morning as he kissed his wife and kids goodbye, patted his dog and took off at sunrise from his gas station.
This is Couch’s third lawn chair flight in as many years.
He hopes to do better than last year, when he flew 193 miles before running low on helium and had to land in the sagebrush of northeastern Oregon.
Durbin, D-Ill., used a Saturday national radio address to call on Republicans to back the bill to stave off a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.
It passed the House overwhelmingly last week in defiance of Bush’s threat to veto it, but it fell just one vote short of the 60 it needed to advance in the Senate, with most Republicans voting “no.”
“It’s time for the Republican senators who are filibustering this measure to put our seniors and our military families ahead of private insurance companies and let the Senate pass this bill as soon as possible,” Durbin said.
Bush and Senate Republicans don’t like the bill because it includes offsetting cuts to insurance companies that use Medicare money to offer private health care coverage to about 20 percent of seniors.
The lower fees to doctors went into effect July 1, but Medicare officials are holding off processing new claims, hoping that Congress will act within the next few weeks to restore the higher payments. Many health plans, including the government program covering military personnel, tie their payment rates to Medicare’s.
In a letter to Democratic leaders on Thursday, Republicans called for a monthlong extension to buy time to write a bill Bush would sign.
“The millions of beneficiaries who depend on Medicare and the providers who treat them are not political pawns in a partisan game, and Congress should not treat them that way,” said the letter, signed by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader.
Democratic leaders intend to use the impending deadline to pressure Republicans, particularly those facing steep re-election challenges, to switch their votes or be accused of hurting seniors and others. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., plans a second vote on the measure as early as next week.
The Medicare bill is just one area in which Republicans and Democrats are battling over spending offsets. Democrats insist on pairing legislation to extend expiring tax cuts with tax increases elsewhere to prevent a rise in the deficit, and Republicans have steadfastly opposed such hikes.
McConnell offered to accept some tax increases if Democrats would agree to reduce spending on domestic programs.
Reid quickly rejected the proposal. In a statement, he said Republicans were choosing to “cut programs to help working families, seniors and veterans in need of health care” to protect multinational companies that would benefit from extending the tax cuts.
It was the American's seventh grand slam title.
(Editing by Pritha Sarkar)
The film taken by Shepherd Yuda using a camera supplied by the newspaper shows prison staff being told by a war veteran how to fill in their ballot papers for Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, claimed a landslide victory in the vote in which there was no opponent and which outside observers said was neither free nor fair due to a campaign of violence and murder.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, withdrew from the run-off saying a fair vote was impossible because of the blatant attacks which he says have killed 103 of his supporters.
"I had never seen that kind of violence before," Yuda said in a video diary accompanying the clandestine filming. "How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people."
Yuda, 36, a prison guard for 13 years, has fled the country with his family in fear of his life.
"I don't regret doing this, although it is a painful decision I have taken," he said. "We can live without the memories of seeing dead bodies in the prison, dead bodies in the street, dead bodies in my family."
He said his uncle had been killed and his father beaten by gangs of thugs loyal to Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF.
"I've served this government for the past 13 years and was loyal to my government," the quietly-spoken Yuda said. "Unfortunately I didn't know that I was being loyal to a government that was not loyal to its people."
The film also shows a woman too scared to vote marking her finger with purple ink to make it appear that she had cast her ballot, and prison staff rallies at which the guards were forced to chant pro-government slogans.
The MDC says 1,500 of its supporters have been detained and another 5,000 are missing after being abducted by ZANU-PF gangs.
Under pressure from the African Union, Mugabe has said he will talk with the MDC but only if it accepts that he is the country's rightful president.
Tsvangirai has rejected talks until violence ends. He says ZANU-PF party must accept him as the rightful election winner, after a first round poll in March in which he defeated the veteran president.
The MDC notes that not a single member of ZANU-PF has been arrested despite the murder of its supporters.
MDC supporters arrested, on charges of political violence, included 20 legislators or parliamentary candidates, the opposition said in a statement. Members of parliament had been held for "trumped up charges" of inciting violence.
(Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)
Defending champion Venus is 5-2 in Wimbledon finals, losing only to Serena in 2002 and ‘03. The win at the All England Club gave Venus her seventh major title.
The match was the seventh Grand Slam final between the American sisters, with Serena leading 5-2. They are now 8-8 overall.
Venus and Serena play later Saturday in the women’s doubles final.
The film taken by Shepherd Yuda using a camera supplied by the newspaper shows prison staff being told by a war veteran how to fill in their ballot papers for Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, claimed a landslide victory in the vote in which there was no opponent and which outside observers said was neither free nor fair due to a campaign of violence and murder.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, withdrew from the run-off saying a fair vote was impossible because of the blatant attacks which he says have killed 103 of his supporters.
"I had never seen that kind of violence before," Yuda said in a video diary accompanying the clandestine filming. "How can a government that claimed to be democratically elected kill its people, murder its people, torture its people."
Yuda, 36, a prison guard for 13 years, has fled the country with his family in fear of his life.
"I don't regret doing this, although it is a painful decision I have taken," he said. "We can live without the memories of seeing dead bodies in the prison, dead bodies in the street, dead bodies in my family."
He said his uncle had been killed and his father beaten by gangs of thugs loyal to Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF.
"I've served this government for the past 13 years and was loyal to my government," the quietly-spoken Yuda said. "Unfortunately I didn't know that I was being loyal to a government that was not loyal to its people."
The film also shows a woman too scared to vote marking her finger with purple ink to make it appear that she had cast her ballot, and prison staff rallies at which the guards were forced to chant pro-government slogans.
The MDC says 1,500 of its supporters have been detained and another 5,000 are missing after being abducted by ZANU-PF gangs.
Under pressure from the African Union, Mugabe has said he will talk with the MDC but only if it accepts that he is the country's rightful president.
Tsvangirai has rejected talks until violence ends. He says ZANU-PF party must accept him as the rightful election winner, after a first round poll in March in which he defeated the veteran president.
The MDC notes that not a single member of ZANU-PF has been arrested despite the murder of its supporters.
MDC supporters arrested, on charges of political violence, included 20 legislators or parliamentary candidates, the opposition said in a statement. Members of parliament had been held for "trumped up charges" of inciting violence.
(Reporting by Jeremy Lovell; editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)
"The market situation will certainly remain tight until 2013," Nobuo Tanaka told German business daily Handelsblatt in an interview released ahead of publication on Monday.
In a summary of the interview distributed on Saturday, Tanaka urged oil producers to increase investment and consumers to save energy.
Developing countries must end the practice of keeping petrol prices artificially low and industrial countries must not reduce taxes on petrol at the pump, which would send the wrong signal to consumers, the paper quoted Tanaka as saying.
Earlier this week, Tanaka told Reuters in an interview that the world oil market was very tight, leaving it vulnerable to several factors that could boost crude prices further.
(Reporting by Jonathan Gould, Editing by Peter Blackburn)
Serena, 26, began the final in ominous fashion producing a series of searing service returns to break the seventh seed in the opening game.
With gusting winds blowing through Centre Court, Venus, 28, often struggled with her ball toss and could have gone a double break down had Serena converted another break point in the fifth game.
But a low angled forehand volley winner got Venus out of trouble and she then suddenly found her range to level at 4-4.
In a high-quality contest, the American sisters traded pounding groundstrokes from the baseline until Venus pounced in the 12 game to take the set when Serena slapped a backhand into the net.
Venus is bidding for a fifth singles title at the grasscourt major, while Serena is targeting a third.
(Reporting by Pritha Sarkar, editing by Clare Lovell)
Bush spent July 4 at Monticello, President Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, died at Monticello in 1826 on the 50th anniversary of the document’s signing.
There, Bush witnessed a naturalization event in which more than 70 men and women from 30 countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Norway and Iraq raised their right hands to take the oath of U.S. citizenship.
“These new citizens are proof that there is no American race, just an American creed,” Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. “In the United States, we believe in the rights and dignity of every person. We believe in equal justice, limited government and the rule of law. And we believe in personal responsibility and tolerance towards others. This creed of freedom and equality has lifted the lives of millions of Americans, whether citizens by birth or citizens by choice.”
Bush also cited the sacrifice of U.S. troops, especially those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“These brave Americans make it possible for America to endure as a free society,” Bush said. “So on this Fourth of July, we owe all those who wear the uniform of the United States a special debt of gratitude. And we thank their families for supporting them in this crucial time for our nation.”